There are few human experiences more universal than gazing up at the night sky,

and the urge to look up is probably as old as our species, if not even older.

But how did our ancient ancestors feel about what they saw in the heavens

and how did it influence the way they lived their lives? For Scientific American science

quickly I'm Rachel Saltman.

You're listening to episode two of our three-part fascination mini series on unusual archaeology.

In this segment, Kata Karath, a science journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Ecuador,

introduces us to Arceo Astronomy, the study of how people in the past experienced and explained the phenomena of the cosmos. A R wechaska.

A la-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-La-La. We have many different universes dimensions, for example,

it's the realm of the gods.

So the army, ancient Sami, they thought

that it's kind of behind the stars so that they are the holes to that dimension.

That's Ante Aikio, an indigenous semi-storyteller and Reindeer Herder who lives in Levy, which is in Northern Finland, some 150 kilometers inside the Arctic Circle.

A moment ago, you heard him yoking. That's a traditional vocal technique among the

Sami that's used to evoke, for example, a feeling, place, person or animal. And they said, he created this melody during a long summer storm that

started suddenly as he was herding reindeer. There are two really important

guards which are Peivi, the sun and man or the moon.

And of course it's logical because the sun has been giving light for us and also the moon has been giving a lot of light for us.

The ancestral lands of the Sami, the European Union's only recognized indigenous people include parts of four countries

from Central Norway and Central Sweden across Finnish Lapland to the Kola Peninsula in Russia.

Sound land here is covered in lush woods.

Other parts are home to green highlands,

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